Review: Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions

Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions by David Attenborough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

That was such a delight! Full of good humor; written in light, lacy, and very British prose - I could almost hear Sir David's familiar voice in every line. But older readers, be warned: this book may cause a few bouts of nostalgia, because it's brimming with romantic adventures (here, read "romantic adventures" as "poorly organized expeditions"). And though mine were never quite so dangerous, reading about them reminds me of recklessness I now miss.

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Review: The Ember Stone

The Ember Stone by Katrina Charman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Minus one star right away for being written after the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and not even having pictures in color. But the Guardians of Ga'Hoole actually make biological sense, here, on the very first page, we are introduced to our hero, "a young barn owl" with a recognizable picture of a Barred Owl nearby. Come on guys, Tito and Stryx actually do look different. The leader of the owls is an obvious Great Horned Owl named Grey, but he sounds like a Screech Owl. Great Horned wouldn't be caught dead saying SCREE-EEE. And those tiger bats? More like tiger Pteranodons. Why not simply admit that there are still dinosauri around in this forest? The last straw for me was the firehawk itself, which is of course a phoenix, but apparently elementary school children are not supposed to know such words. I wonder how it wasn't "translated out" of Harry Potter.

The plot is just marvelous. If this book was written with 1st-3rd graders in mind, they were given a fabulous role model and a way to implement natural selection with a variety of tools. The book is just brimming with dangerous, stupid, and illogical behaviour of our young heroes. Very educational. Oh! I almost forgot! The Ember Stone is purple! Which of course makes so much sense semantically.

Two stars only because my first grader enjoyed it so much he even talked me into reading it.

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Review: The Ember Stone

The Ember Stone by Katrina Charman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Minus one star right away for being written after the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and not even having pictures in color. But the Guardians of Ga'Hoole actually make biological sense, here, on the very first page, we are introduced to our hero, "a young barn owl" with a recognizable picture of a Barred Owl nearby. Come on guys, Tito and Stryx actually do look different. The leader of the owls is an obvious Great Horned Owl named Grey, but he sounds like a Screech Owl. Great Horned wouldn't be caught dead saying SCREE-EEE. And those tiger bats? More like tiger Pteranodons. Why not simply admit that there are still dinosauri around in this forest? The last straw for me was the firehawk itself, which is of course a phoenix, but apparently elementary school children are not supposed to know such words. I wonder how it wasn't "translated out" of Harry Potter.

The plot is just marvelous. If this book was written with 1st-3rd graders in mind, they were given a fabulous role model and a way to implement natural selection with a variety of tools. The book is just brimming with dangerous, stupid, and illogical behaviour of our young heroes. Very educational.

Two stars only because my first grader enjoyed it so much he even talked me into reading it.

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Review: The Ember Stone

The Ember Stone by Katrina Charman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Minus one star right away for being written after the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and not even having pictures in color. But the Guardians of Ga'Hoole actually make biological sense, here, on the very first page, we are introduced to our hero, "a young barn owl" with a recognizable picture of a Barred Owl nearby. Come on guys, Tito and Stryx actually do look different. The leader of the owls is an obvious Great Horned Owl named Grey, but he sounds like a Screech Owl. Great Horned wouldn't be caught dead saying SCREE-EEE. And those tiger bats? More like tiger Pteranodons. Why not simply admit that there are still dinosauri around in this forest? The last straw for me was the firehawk itself, which is of course a phoenix, but apparently elementary school children are not supposed to know such words. I wonder how it wasn't "translated out" of Harry Potter.

The plot is just marvelous. If this book was written with 1st-3rd grades in mind, they were given a fabulous role model and a way to implement natural selection with a variety of tools. The book is just brimming with dangerous, stupid, and illogical behaviour of our young heroes. Very educational.

Two stars only because my first grader enjoyed it so much he even talked me into reading it.

View all my reviews

Review: The Ember Stone

The Ember Stone by Katrina Charman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Minus one star right away for being written after the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and not even having pictures in color. But the Guardians of Ga'Hoole actually make biological sense, here, on the very first page, we are introduced to our hero, "a young barn owl" with a recognizable picture of a Barred Owl nearby. Come on guys, Tito and Stryx actually do look different. The leader of the owls is an obvious Great Horned Owl named Grey, but he sounds like a Screech Owl. Great Horned wouldn't be caught dead saying SCREE-EEE. And those tiger bats? More like tiger Pteranodons. Why not simply admit that there are still dinosauri around in this forest? The last straw for me was the firehawk itself, which is of course a phoenix, but apparently elementary school children are not supposed to know such words. I wonder how it wasn't "translated out" of Harry Potter.

The plot is just marvelous. If this book was written with 1st-3rd grades in mind, they were given a fabulous role model and a way to implement natural selection with a variety of tools. The book is just brimming with dangerous, stupid, and illogical behaviour of our young heroes. Very educational.

Two stars only because my first grader enjoyed so much he even talked me into reading it.

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Review: Dragonborn

Dragonborn by Toby Forward
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

At page 144 I give up. We made it almost to 50%, but it's not only not getting better, it's actually getting worse and worse. My son is at the stage where he can read picture books himself, but they no longer interest him. So we moved on to bigger novels and read a few pretty books about dragons. The first three Harry Potter books were swallowed in a blink. But this... The plot is way to scratchy to interest a kid. The characters are... Were there characters? Some dirty and amazingly not-self-aware kid that moves around with no obvious intention. Some mysterious "evil" lurking in a huge prison. And a bunch of idiotic wizards so easily swayed, it's amazing. And yes, a dragon we know nothing about. The motives of any of them are unclear. And that's only the beginning. The biggest downfall of this book is descriptions, which are non-existent. And kids' books should be all about descriptions! In this particular case even my, fully developed, imagination was not enough to picture what's going on in any detail. The most I can say is I can follow the plot more or less (and I cannot say that about my son), but I can't imagine that world. This is one of those books that seems designed to kill a reader in a kid. So get rid of it before it's too late!

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Review: Allegiant

Allegiant by Veronica Roth
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

There are always good guys and bad guys. The good guys are obviously the ones who won, since they get to write the history. In this particular book, this is the only trait distinguishing the good and the bad. They use the same methods, want to achieve more or less the same outcomes... There should be a fourth book in the series, the one that takes the action even father away from the city and explains at last how is it possible to keep a country in ruins for two hundred years. I mean, yeah, the war, the rebels, the damage... Ten years? Maybe twenty? Or even fifty? And how do they keep themselves fed and otherwise well-supplied? I feel like it's all an experiment, including the burro and the fringe; and someone is sitting looking at it all and laughing. In any case, the solution is so ridiculous, it's painful. Let's just start again and everything will be just fine, we can build a better world just like that.

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Review: Norse Mythology

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like the myths. No. I love those myths!! However, it is not Gaiman's fault. As for this particular retelling, I didn't like too much. It reads more like a collection of translator's notes (and I read the sources, thank you very much). Gaiman's style is too clipped for this purpose. Dryness really doesn't suit a myth, it needs a flourish.

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Review: The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a cultural experience this book is worth the time it took me to read (or rather to listen). So I'm glad I read it. Other than that... I guess I have high standards for science fiction, especially the 'harder' versions of it. There are several interesting ideas in this book, that would be nice to explore more. There are also several ideas that I couldn't care less about, but ok. The one thing I didn't like from the very beginning, and it haunted me the whole book, is the way the author describes how scientists think. Based on what I know about scientists, they usually don't commit suicides when an experiment doesn't go as predicted. Or if the results can't be easily explained. Really, they are a bit more curious than that.

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